NOAA Should Give Overfished Mackerel a Fighting Chance

Only two months remain before the new year, when new catch limits go into effect for many ocean fish species in U.S. waters. One I’m particularly concerned about is Atlantic mackerel, a species found off the Atlantic coast that is prey for myriad wild marine predators. These mackerel are overfished and relentlessly pursued by industrial-scale vessels towing nets that can take a million pounds of marine life out of the ocean in one trip. Even worse, because these nets indiscriminately scoop up everything in their paths, other species are also being depleted in the process. Yet despite overwhelming evidence that current management of Atlantic mackerel isn’t working, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is poised to increase catch limits on this beleaguered species and the fish that swim with them.

A drastic population drop and a weak response

Decades of intensive fishing have driven a steep decline in Atlantic mackerel numbers, and early this year a scientific assessment from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service confirmed that the population is overfished—meaning that the stock is “at an unsustainably low level.” Once a species has this official designation, fishery management councils are required under the nation’s primary ocean fishing law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, to rebuild the population in the shortest time possible. In my series on of articles on mackerel this summer, I strongly encouraged the Mid-Atlantic Council to approve a three-year rebuilding timeline—the only alternative supported by science, the law, and common sense.

Instead, the council approved a five-year rebuilding timeline, which would allow the mackerel fishing industry to significantly increase the catch rate of these depleted fish next year. NOAA Fisheries, which has a vote on the council, supported the three-year plan over the five-year rebuilding option, suggesting that the agency does not support the council’s risky decision to drag out rebuilding for this imperiled species.

Why NOAA should reject the five-year timeline

The council’s draft plan now moves to the agency for final approval—a step that includes a legal review—and NOAA Fisheries should replace it with the three-year plan it supported earlier this year.

Even though the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires rebuilding of overfished species as quickly as possible, the council approved the timeline without justifying the delay. And the fact is there simply isn’t a good reason for taking more than three years to rebuild mackerel.

The five-year rebuilding timeline would significantly raise the catch limits next year—a big risk given that the mackerel population may be on the verge of collapse. Further, this approach would put the wider ecosystem at risk. Like Atlantic herring, mackerel are critical food for many species, including whales, sharks, dolphins, seals, tuna, striped bass, marlin, and gannets.

When the council passed the mackerel plan, it also decided—with no scientific basis—to increase the allowable catch cap on four other highly depleted species of forage fish that school and are often caught along with mackerel. States and the federal government have spent millions of dollars to improve river habitat for these species, known collectively as river herring and shad, which spend most of their lives at sea but run rivers to spawn. Fishermen are banned from catching and keeping these fish in many states to recover the species, rules the federal government is directly undermining with the increased catch caps in U.S. waters.

Hope for mackerel lies with conservation management

Mackerel can experience boom and bust cycles, but evidence shows that their numbers have continued to decline even in robust years because managers have repeatedly increased fishing to unsustainable levels. The downward trend of the mackerel population spans decades.

Mackerel were once among the most abundant forage species in the U.S. Atlantic, and the science suggests that they could rebuild quickly with effective conservation management. Some reports indicated that 2015 was an especially good year for baby mackerel, which could become the foundation of rebuilding if managed appropriately. As a result, with a properly implemented three-year rebuilding plan, the fishing industry could still catch nearly as many mackerel in 2019 as it did this year, and see 2020 and 2021 catch limits higher than those set for this year. In short, following the law and applying sound conservation principles could spark a recovery that would support a significantly larger fishery in only a few years, without decreasing current catch limits. And if the projections are shown to be wrong, as they were recently with Atlantic herring, the decision to be careful now will prove essential.

The council should honor its own policy

Finally, as I wrote previously, implementing anything other than the three-year timeline for rebuilding mackerel also forces the council to overrule its own policy, adopted in 2016, on taking a low-risk approach to rebuilding overfished species. Atlantic mackerel present the first test of that policy, which took years to develop and was supported by thousands of stakeholders.

For all of these reasons, I hope NOAA Fisheries will follow the law and reject the council’s five-year rebuilding timeline request and instead adopt a three-year rebuilding plan. The law, science, marine ecosystem, and common sense are all served by managing mackerel to rebuild in three years.

Joseph Gordon is senior manager of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. oceans program in the Northeast.